The facts and whispers on PEDs

Hall of Fame ballot: The facts and whispers on PEDs
Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2012/11/28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-roger-clemens-barry-bonds/1731833/

Baseball's Hall of Fame released its 2013 ballot Wednesday
Several players directly or indirectly tied to steroid use appear for the first time
Players have 15 years to earn election to the Hall

November 28. 2012 - It will be known, immediately and for the foreseeable future, as the Baseball Hall of Fame's Doping Class.

Wednesday, the Hall released its 2013 ballot that will be sent to 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who must decide how best to handle a long list of players tied directly, indirectly or circumstantially to performance-enhancing drugs.

Indeed, the debate will not die once balloting results are released Jan. 9.

And the support each player receives likely won't remain static, either. A player must be named on 75% of ballots to earn induction to the Hall, but just 5% to remain on the ballot, for up to 15 years. Over that course of time, the voting pool will change, as could the attitude of the electorate. New information may emerge about candidates that could steer voters in a new direction.

But what do we know now, about both the ballot newcomers and the holdovers?

It's up to each voter to decide whether to ignore the cloud of PED use, or punish a candidate for his doping, suspected or otherwise. We're not here today to cast judgment on the proper route.

Rather, here's a user's guide to the users, suspected and otherwise, that voters will be basing their ballots upon.

Keep it close at hand. Some debates may not go away for the next 15 years.

No-doubters

Rafael Palmeiro: Tested positive for Stanolozol in 2005, the first whale nailed by baseball's drug-testing program. His 3,020 career hits and 569 home runs would make him a Hall lock; instead, his positive test -- and sanctimonious denials of PED use in a 2005 congressional hearing -- reduced him to vote totals of 11% and 12.6% his first two years on the ballot.

Mark McGwire: His nebulous testimony about steroid use in the same hearing that set Palmeiro up for his fall from grace all but discounted his 583 career home runs. McGwire peaked at 23.7% of the vote in 2010. Coming clean did not help his cause, either. After admitting in January 2010 he took steroids and growth hormone in his career, McGwire's total dipped to 19% each of the next two years.

Legally ensnared

Barry Bonds: Bonds dodged a perjury conviction in a federal trial related to his testimony in the BALCO doping scandal but was convicted of obstruction of justice, a conviction that is still under appeal. However, the crux of that trial was based on whether he "knowingly" took steroids. Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was jailed on numerous occasions for refusing to testify against Bonds. The book Game of Shadows breaks down in excruciating detail the arc of Bonds' alleged used, which it claims began after the 1998 season. Those details have not been credibly disputed. For what it's worth, Bonds had a near-Hall of Fame career (411 home runs, 445 steals, a .996 OPS) from 1986-98, years in which he was ostensibly clean. By the time his 22-year career wrapped up in 2007, he had a record 762 home runs and a 1.051 OPS.

Roger Clemens: The biggest name ensnared in baseball's 2007 Mitchell Report on PED use, Clemens will learn this year if his successful fight to avoid federal perjury charges -- and his seven Cy Young Awards -- resonate with voters more than allegations from his former trainer that he took steroids and growth hormone between the years of 1998-2001. Clemens won 354 games over his career, including 213 wins and four Cy Young Awards before he supposedly started using PEDs. But voters must weigh whether the allegations leveled by Brian McNamee -- at least partially corroborated by former teammate Andy Pettitte -- resonate more than Clemens' June 2012 acquittal on six charges of lying to Congress and obstruction. Clemens sued McNamee for defamation in 2008, a suit eventually dismissed by a series of federal judges. McNamee's defamation suit against Clemens, filed in 2009, is still winding through the legal process in New York.

Circumstantially linked

Sammy Sosa: McGwire was admittedly doped up when he slugged a then-record 70 home runs in 1998. The only player who could keep pace with him? Sosa, who finished with 66. Seven years later, they both testified before Congress about PED use. While Sosa came out a bit better than McGwire, his suddenly faulty English and statement that he had not "broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," where steroids can be legally purchased, did not help his cause. Sosa's statement that he "never took performance-enhancing drugs" was investigated by a House committee in 2010 after a New York Times report said he was among a group of players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 survey testing. But the House panel did not recommend the Department of Justice investigate Sosa, perhaps in part because of a five-year statute of limitations on such investigations.

Nothing but whispers

Jeff Bagwell: There has been no evidence that Bagwell used PEDs during a career in which he hit 449 home runs, had a .297 batting average, won an MVP award and finished in the top three two other times, all easily Hall credentials. In fact, his career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) put him in elite, sure-fire Hall territory. But his bulky physique and the large disconnect between his minor-league and major league production (he hit six home runs in 731 minor-league at-bats) have tailed him. Bagwell received 42% and 56% of the vote his first two years on the ballot, and barring any PED evidence emerging, figures to eventually win election. But in a 2010 interview with ESPN.com, Bagwell seemed to sense that he might be a victim of his era when it came to Hall of Fame voting. "I know a lot of people are saying, 'His body got bigger.'" Bagwell said then. "Well, if you're eating 30 pounds of meat every single day and you're working out and bench pressing, you're going to get bigger. You can go to every single trainer and they'll say, 'He was the first here and last to leave, and that dude worked his ass off.'"

Mike Piazza: Like Bagwell, Piazza had famously modest amateur credentials -- he was drafted in the 62nd round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. Then, he developed into arguably the greatest-hitting catcher of all time as baseball's steroid era blossomed. That's put him in the crosshairs of suspicion, though he has publicly denied using PEDs. One on-the-record assertion that Piazza doped came in Jeff Pearlman's 2009 book on Clemens, The Rocket Who Fell To Earth. Reggie Jefferson, a major league first baseman/outfielder from 1991-99, said Piazza's use was widely assumed by his peers. "He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it,"Jefferson said. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."

Hall ballot deep in big league accomplishments

First-timers Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Sosa, Piazza there to challenge closing-in Morris
Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com | 11/28/12
http://mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121124&content_id=40406376

The newly released 2013 National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is rich in numbers and deep in talent:

• Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader with 762.

• Roger Clemens, a storied right-hander with 354 wins.

• Craig Biggio, a second baseman with 3,060 hits.

• Sammy Sosa, the only slugger to bash more than 60 homers in three different seasons and who totaled 609.

• Mike Piazza, who hit 396 of his 427 homers as a catcher -- the most of any player at that position in Major League history.

• Curt Schilling, winner of 216 regular-season games and 11 more in the postseason.

• Jack Morris, a starter who so dominated the American League during one decade that he's now on the cusp of immortality in his 14th try.

The ballot that members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America will contemplate during the month of December, though, is not simply about career numbers. This year's voting -- with the addition of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa in particular -- brings further attention to baseball's era played under the cloud of performance-enhancement questions.

"It's going to be a very interesting ballot and I know the writers are going to have some tough decisions to make," said Morris, who finished with 66.7 percent of the vote in the last balloting "Unfortunately, they are going to have to be the moral police and I don't think a lot of them want to be. Hopefully it will work out the right way and it will be the right thing when it's all said and done."

As all Baseball Hall of Fame votes are conducted, a candidate needs to be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots to be elected. BBWAA members with 10 consecutive years or more of covering the sport are eligible to vote and they can name as many as 10 players on their ballots. The results of the voting will be announced on Jan. 9. MLB.com will air a live simulcast of MLB Network coverage of the announcement.

Those elected, if any, will be inducted into the Hall during the annual ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 28. They will be joined posthumously on that day by anyone selected by the pre-integration Veterans Committee. The winners of the Ford C. Frick Award for meritorious contributions to baseball announcing and the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for excellence in baseball writing will be honored on July 27 at Doubleday Field.

Anyone named by the Veterans Committee -- plus the two award winners -- will be announced at the Winter Meetings, to be held in Nashville, Tenn., from Dec. 3-6.

Morris, who had 254 career wins during his 18-year career -- an American League-best 162 of them during the 1980s -- tops a list of returnees that includes, among others, Jeff Bagwell, Lee Smith, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and Edgar Martinez.

Morris is hoping that his 14th year on the ballot will be the charm. He fell 48 votes shy of election for the Class of 2012, in which Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was the only player elected by the BBWAA. In recent votes, Burt Blyleven was elected to the Hall in his 14th year, Jim Rice in his 15th year and Bruce Sutter in his 13th.

All of this is setting an optimistic course for Morris.

"That's the beauty of the waiting process; the fact that there is time," Morris said. "If it was one vote and you're gone, there would be a lot more guys in or a lot more out. I've always said this: the guys who are in, they deserve to be in. There may be a few guys who aren't in who deserve to be in. There's never going to be a perfect system. You can't really change it to make it perfect."

Among the first-timers, Biggio would seem to be on a clear course toward a plaque because 3,000 hits is almost a certain ticket to the hallowed Hall. Of the 26 other retired players who amassed 3,000 or more hits, only two are not in the Hall and both have extenuating circumstances. One is Rafael Palmiero, who finished with 3,020 hits and 569 homers but garnered 12.6 percent in his second year on the ballot after being suspended for a positive steroid test in 2005, his last season in the Major Leagues. The other is Pete Rose, the all-time leader with 4,256 hits who is banned from baseball because of gambling and is not eligible to be included on Hall of Fame ballots.

Biggio played 20 seasons, all for the Astros. He batted .281 as a catcher, outfielder and second baseman; he played 1,989 of his 2,780 games at second base.

"It would be a very, very rewarding feeling if it was to happen," said Biggio, who has been a high school coach and a special assistant to the general manager for the Astros since his retirement in 2007. "I'll just cross my fingers and hopefully next year, come Jan. 9, I'll get a phone call."

Bonds played 22 seasons for the Pirates and Giants and holds the all-time records for homers in a career and a single season (73), plus walks (2,558) and intentional walks (688). By even the metrics of today, Bonds is third in overall WAR (Wins Above Replacement) behind Babe Ruth and Cy Young, third in offensive WAR, sixth with a .444 on-base percentage, sixth with a .607 slugging percentage and fourth with a 1.051 OPS, which combines on-base and slugging percentages. He won the National League MVP seven times, three times before 1998, the demarcation line for when many believe the so-called streoids era began.

"I gave to that game," Bonds said recently. "I know how many games I played, how many years I put in, how many hours I put in, how much time I've worked, how hard I've worked and I am never, never, ever going to justify that part of my life. And it was a great part of my life. ... "

"This is an exceptional group of players," he said. "... We're always going to respect each other as athletes."

Clemens, who pitched for the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros during a 24-year career, is ninth in career victories, one shy of Gregg Maddux, the top winning pitcher in their era with 355. He is third with 4,672 strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. His career WAR ranks eighth for all players and third among pitchers behind Young and Walter Johnson, the pitchers with the most wins in history. Clemens was the AL MVP and won the Cy Young in 1986 for the Red Sox. He captured the Cy Young Award seven times, six of them in the AL, four of them prior to 1998.

Sosa hit 66 homers for the Cubs in 1998, the year of the feverish home run race with Mark McGwire to break Roger Maris' record of 61, set in 1961. McGwire finished with 70, a record that was broken three years later by Bonds. During that '98 season, Sosa led the National League with 158 RBIs and was named the NL's MVP. His home run hitting didn't end there. Sosa hit 63 in 1999, 64 in 2001 and led the league with 50 in 2000 and 49 in 2002. During that five-year period from 1998-2002, Sosa hit 292 homers.

Piazza ranks fifth offensively among the top nine catchers, six of them Hall of Famers. He hit .308 and was a 12-time All-Star, winning Rookie of the Year honors with the Dodgers in 1993. He was MVP of the 1996 All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

Schilling and Randy Johnson were the co-MVPs of the 2001 World Series as their D-backs defeated the Yankees in seven games. Schilling's regular-season record of 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA is not particularly Hall-worthy, but his 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in 19 postseason starts for the Phillies, D-backs and Red Sox certainly stand out.

Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.07 ERA in seven World Series starts, also winning it all with Boston in 2004 and '07. In 2004, he created postseason lore by pitching against the Yankees with such a serious foot injury that blood soaked his baseball sock.

Baseball Hall of Fame ballot 2013

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa debut
11-28-12
http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-11-28/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballot-2013-barry-bonds-roger-clemens-sammy-sosa-ped-eligi

The Baseball Writers’ Association has unveiled its 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, which, as expected, is full of controversial first-time candidates.

Among the first-timers with proven or suspected ties to performance-enhancing drugs are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. All have put up Hall-worthy numbers (Bonds is the all-time home run king; Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts and ninth all time in wins; and Sosa is eighth all time in homers), but the steroids stigma hangs over them.

The ball now is in the hands of the more than 600 voters, who thus far have shown no willingness to give PED-tainted candidates anywhere close to the 75 percent of the vote required for induction. Mark McGwire’s best showing came in 2010 when he got 23.7 percent of the vote.

More details about the 2013 ballot:

The 24 newcomers

Sandy Alomar Jr., Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Jose Mesa, Mike Piazza, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Woody Williams.

The 13 returning candidates

Jack Morris (14th time eligible, named on 66.7 percent of ballots last year); Jeff Bagwell (3rd, 56.0 percent); Lee Smith (11th, 50.6 percent); Tim Raines (6th, 48.7 percent); Alan Trammell (12th, 36.8 percent); Edgar Martinez (4th, 36.5 percent); Fred McGriff (4th, 23.9 percent); Larry Walker (3rd, 22.9 percent); Mark McGwire (7th, 19.5 percent); Don Mattingly (13th, 17.8 percent); Dale Murphy (15th, 14.5 percent); Rafael Palmeiro (3rd, 12.6 percent); Bernie Williams (2nd, 9.6 percent)

The process

The results of the vote will be announced Jan. 9, with the Hall of Fame induction ceremony set for July 28 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The Great American Witch-hunt

Dave Zirin http://www.thenation.com/blog/159935/great-american-witch-hunt-how-barry-bonds-became-convicted-felon

This wasn’t supposed to happen in Barack Obama’s America. We were told that these sorts of prosecutions wouldn’t be the priority of an Eric Holder Justice Department. But just as Guantanamo Bay detention centers and military tribunals have remained in place, the perjury witch-hunt trial of Major League Baseball’s home run king, Barry Lamar Bonds, continued unabated and has now reached a predictably ugly conclusion.

After seven years, and millions of dollars in court costs, Bonds has been found guilty of obstruction of justice. As for the all-important three perjury charges, the jury couldn’t agree whether Bonds lied to a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) when he swore under oath that he never knowingly took performance enhancing drugs. Without corroborating evidence from Bonds’s trainer and lifelong friend Greg Anderson, the jury could was deadlocked and the Judge declared a mistrial on all perjury charges. But the obstruction of justice conviction makes Bonds a convicted felon, and sets him up for a May 20th hearing where he could get as many as 10 years behind bars.

What did Bonds do to “obstruct justice”? According to one juror, “Steve,” the obstruction of justice charge was reached because, "The whole grand jury testimony was a series of evasive answers. There were pointed questions that were asked two or three or four different ways that never got clearly answered. That's how we came to that.'' Wow. Apparently, a “series of evasive answers” lines you up for a 10-year sentence behind bars. By that standard, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby should be breaking rocks in Leavenworth for their performance at the Valerie Plame trial.

As BALCO founder Victor Conte - who is no friend of Bonds - said to USA Today, "This verdict absolutely makes no sense to me. Of all of these counts, the one that makes the least sense to me is the obstruction charge. Tell me how there was obstruction of justice. This is all about the selected persecution of Barry Bonds. This is not fair. I was the heavy in this. I accepted full responsibility and the consequences and went to prison. How is that obstruction? Doesn't make sense.”

It doesn’t. After all the public money, drama, and hysterics, this is what we’re left with. He was “evasive." Keep in mind that we live in a country where the US Department of Justice has not pursued one person for the investment banking fraud that cratered the US economy in 2008. Not one indictment has been issued to a single Bush official on charges of ordering torture or lying to provoke an invasion of Iraq. Instead, we get farcical reality television like the US vs Barry Bonds.

This was a trial where you longed for the somber dignity of a Judge Judy. Since Anderson wouldn’t talk, the government was left with two real witnesses: Kimberly Bell, Bonds mistress, brought in to discuss his sexual dysfunctions resulting from steroids, and Steve Hoskins, the business manager whom Bonds fired for alleged theft and fraud. But their real star was a once-anonymous IRS official named Jeff Novitsky, who has proudly seen Bonds as an all-consuming obsession, U.S. Constitution be damned.

ESPN legal expert Lester Munson described the verdict as “a major triumph for federal agent Jeff Novitzky.” That alone should chill our bones. Without a warrant, Novitzky started his BALCO investigation by rooting through Victor Conte’s trash and taking it back to his house to sift through in his leisure hours. But Conte was a nothing to Novitzky. From the beginning, his sights were on Barry Bonds.

Jonathan Littman of Yahoo! Sports wrote, “two agents working on the case knew that Novitzky ‘hated' Bonds, and heard him brag about his hopes to cash in on a book deal. The agents demanded to see copies of his reports and were rebuffed by federal officials. Novitzky, however, was given carte blanche by the head of the IRS to drop the normal duties of an IRS agent -- investigating tax fraud and money laundering -- and became our de facto national sports doping czar.”

In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, Novitsky marched into the offices of sports-drug testing monolith Comprehensive Drug Testing. Carrying a warrant which authorized him to see the sealed drug tests of just ten baseball players, he paraded out with 4,000 supposedly confidential medical files, including records for every baseball player in the Major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN the Magazine, "Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky's actions a 'callous disregard' for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence..."

During closing arguments, Bonds’s attorney, Cristina Arguedas, looked at the jury as she pointed at the prosecution, accused them of misconduct and asked, "Why are we even here?"

It’s a good question. But asking the question is much safer than answering it. We’re here because Major League Baseball and the US government has long decided that Barry Bonds would shoulder the burden for the steroid era. We’re here because a surly Black athlete who thinks that the press is just a step above vermin was easy pickings for an industry rife with systemic corruption. Major League Baseball made billions off of the steroid era, an era many now see as a rancid, tainted lie. It was an era where owners became obscenely wealthy and billions in public funds were spent on ballparks. The press cheered and America dug the long ball. Now the dust has cleared, our cities have been looted, Barry Bonds could be going to prison, and Commissioner Bud Selig still has a job - and a RAISE. With apologies to Harvey Dent, this is the story of the Black athlete today: die a hero or live long enough to be a villain. And the men in the suits walk – or in Selig’s case, slouch - all the way to the bank.

Around the start of the trial, nearly a decade ago, Bonds said, "This is something we, as African-American athletes, live with every day. I don't need a headline that says, 'Bonds says there's racism in the game of baseball.' We all know it. It's just that some people don't want to admit it. They're going to play dumb like they don't know what the hell is going on." We shouldn’t play dumb either. Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder said words to the effect that the US government would no longer be in the steroid-inspection business. Like so much else in the last two years, it was just words.

Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall

In struggle and sports

Dave Z

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/21/2010-08-21_opinion_roger_clemens_is_no_saint_but_baseball_owners_executives_need_to_be_held.html

Clemens Shouldn't Have to Take the Fall
by Dave Zirin

Roger Clemens is about as popular in baseball circles as jock itch. The man is such a pariah, he makes Barry Bonds look like Justin Bieber. Yet we should hold the cheers over the recent news that Clemens has been indicted on perjury charges for lying in front of Congress on questions related his much-denied steroid use.

However, the real question here is: Why Clemens was dragged in front of Congress in the first place? We can ask the same of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and all the players who have been put under the congressional hot lights. To put it bluntly, why have players, and not team owners, been given the third degree? Not one owner has ever been called to account for the steroid era in Major League Baseball. Not one person who has called an owner's box home has had to answer questions about steroid use.

This would be akin to investigating the oil rig workers after the Deepwater Horizon spill, but leaving BP bigwigs untouched. Yes, individual players may have made terrible personal decisions that sullied the game. But there's a systemic problem here, too. And the absence of corporate accountability around this issue is simply breathtaking.

In February 2005, Major League Commissioner Bud Selig — a former team owner himself — made the following statement about steroids: "I [had]never heard about it." That strains credulity to the breaking point. As sports writer D.K. Wilson has noted, "General managers know if a star player reported to spring training at 185 lbs. one season and 215 the next, and whether that newly added 30 pounds was fat or muscle, or a combination of both. As does the team owner — or at least one who's not asleep in the executive suite."

The issue of performance enhancing drugs had been discussed at Major League Baseball's winter ownership meetings as far back as 1988. Assuming he was awake at these meetings, Selig — then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers — would have heard the words of former Cleveland Indians trainer Brent Starr.

"Here's the thing that really bothers me," Starr said in 2007. "They sit there, meaning the commissioners office, Bud Selig and that group...They sit there and say, ‘Well, now that we know that this happened were going to do something about it.' I have notes from the Winter Meetings where the owners group and the players association sat in meetings with the team physicians and team trainers. I was there. And team physicians stood up and said, ‘Look, we need to do something about this. We've got a problem here if we don't do something about it. That was in 1988.'"

The roots of the current crisis lie not in the individual moral failings of players like Clemens, but from systemic greed at the highest levels of the sport. The juicing of the game began in earnest in 1994, when a players' strike mutated into an owners lockout that led to the cancellation of the World Series. The popularity of what was once "America's pastime" sank to a shameful low.

Then, the muscles started coming in — and the bucks along with them. The protracted pitching battles of old were replaced by games that were essentially home run derbies. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were, briefly, the heroes of the day. And so, helped by steroids, baseball came back into fashion as a new, juiced-up sport of A-Rod clones. Steroids were simply a quiet part of the marketing plan.

Therefore, despite your personal views on Roger Clemens, it must be acknowledged that the steroid era has been, to paraphrase a famous quote about the criminal justice system, like a magical fishing night that captures the minnows while the whales go free. Even when the minnows are as unpleasant as Clemens, this fundamental truth must be acknowledged.

Zirin is author of the new book "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." He is also, tragically, a Mets fan.

Beast of the Month - June 2009

Beast of the Month - June 2009
Alex Rodriguez
Steroid-Fueled Baseball Star

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"Jose Canseco Smirking Smugly At Nation"
Recent article title found at Onion.com

Is Jose Canseco ever wrong? Seriously, give this man a Pulitzer. In April, he speculated the reason Manny Ramirez (a two-time World Series champion for the Boston Red Sox and current Los Angeles Dodger superstar) didn't receive a monster contract offer during the off-season was because the owner's knew he was a steroid juicer. More than likely, Canseco guessed, Manny was on the 2003 list of players who tested positive for doping, a list of names likely already leaked to MLB owners. On this score, Canseco said he was 90 percent sure.

For his wacky conspiracy theorizing, Canseco was once again lambasted in the media, the same way he has been repeatedly treated over the last four years since his book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big, was released. Since then, not one claim by him has been proven false, and many of his claims, even those sounding most luridly outlandish at first, have been proven true. Despite his track record, one sportswriter dismissed Jose C as "ridiculous and irresponsible" for engaging in "pseudo-slanderous steroid chatter" over Ramirez.

But what do you know? Barely a month after Canseco made his reckless hunch, Manny was suspended for 50 games after testing positive for a banned substance. While he wasn't actually caught taking steroids, the drug he did test positive for, human chorionic gonadotropin, is popular among roiders for stopping the side effects of ending a cycle. (You know, little things like lower sperm count and shrunken testicles.) Maybe there's another explanation for why Ramirez was taking a female fertility drug, but that he is indeed a drug doper as Canseco had suspected seems to fit Occam's Razor the best.

Of course, the whole steroid scandal may have jumped the shark with the Ramirez revelation. At this point, is anybody shocked when a ballplayer is revealed as a drug cheater? This is, after all, the third time since 2005 The Konformist has focused Beast of the Month on the subject, which means we've covered this more in our 13-year history than we have Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians and Lebanon. Yes, baseball is America's game (well, really it's football, and anyone who claims otherwise is kidding themselves) and yes, the steroid scandal has tarnished the game's legacy, but at this point, we've got more important things to do, like investigate Wall Street mass thievery, remind people there are still bloody pointless wars being fought in the Middle East and search YouTube for videos of Lady Gaga. So consider this BOTM a kiss-off to the whole "professional baseball players cheat" moral outrage as we get onto better things.

But before we jump off the whole steroid scandal bandwagon, The Konformist needs to get one last jab in, to a guy really deserving it. After all, part of the reason the steroid outing of the best player on baseball's second most famous franchise received such a ho-hum response is because the best player on baseball's most famous franchise (Alex Rodriguez, The Konformist Beast of the Month) had been outed as a fraud only months before.

For those who don't follow baseball, Rodriguez, better known as A-Rod, is not only the best player on the New York Yankees, he is arguably the best player in baseball, period. (Only Manny and Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals come close.) He has already won 3 MVP titles, this despite not winning in 2001 and 2002, when he hit 52 and 57 home runs. In 2006, he was the only non-pitcher still active to make Sports Illustrated's Alltime All-Star Team. (Fellow Yankees Roger Clemens and reliever Mariano Rivera also made the team.) It is suspected by many that Barry Bonds, the man formerly viewed as the best player in baseball, was snubbed from the team thanks to the evidence against him as a steroid cheat.

Indeed, the conventional wisdom until last year was that A-Rod was going to be the hero who saved the game by restoring the integrity of the numbers. He ended last season with 553 career home runs, 13th all time. He is second to only Ken Griffey Jr. among current players, and Griffey (perhaps the only modern slugger without any steroid suspicion due to his non-muscled physique) appears soon to be headed to retirement. That left A-Rod with the best chance of surpassing Bonds' career total of 762* round-trippers, something he could conceivably do in four great seasons. After that, balance would be returned to the universe, as the most sacred record in American sports would not be held by a doping phony.

Even without the recent revelations, the "A-Rod as Christ savior" storyline had its problems. For all his talent, he's never been particularly loved by the public or, perhaps more importantly, his fellow teammates. He isn't a surly SOB like Bonds, but his well-noted narcissistic self-absorption (on full display on the April 2009 cover of Details where he was seen kissing his own image in a mirror) has made him a magnet for haters. As for his contributions to teams, here are some curious facts: in 2001, after he left the Seattle Mariners for a ten-year, $252 million payout with the Texas Rangers, the Mariners won an astounding 116 games. His Rangers, meanwhile, finished in last place the three seasons he was there. Since he has moved to the Yankees in 2004, meanwhile, they have yet to even appear in a World Series despite all their well-paid talent, while their nemesis in Boston broke the Bambino curse with two titles, starting coincidentally the year he started playing in the Big Apple.

Okay, maybe the bad luck of the Rangers and Yankees isn't his entire fault. (Although his notorious showing in post-season play, which has earned him like Bonds before the insulting nickname of "Mr. April-September" from some, certainly hasn't helped.) Still, entering his sixth year in NY pinstripes, he wasn't even half as loved by fans or fellow Yankees as fellow teammate Derek Jeter. This was underscored in manager Joe Torre's recently published book The Yankee Years, where he reveals A-Rod was derisively termed as "A-Fraud" by teammates annoyed by his shallow insincerity. His 2007 demand to renegotiate his record contract to an even larger ten-year, $275 million didn't help.

Torre's tell-all bio was only the second recent book to dish dirt on A-Rod. The first came out last year, when Canseco released his sequel to Juiced, titled Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball. The big bombshell in the tome: Canseco claims in the latter half of the 1990s, A-Rod asked for help in finding a trainer that would supply steroids. He refused to name the trainer (referring to him only as "Max") and when pressed on Nightline over his refusal to provide corroborating evidence, Canseco replied: "Let's see how Alex reacts. Let's see if they call me a liar again. How's that for ya? Let's see if all of a sudden they're gonna call me a liar again."

Surprise, surprise. As he was lambasted earlier this year over his Manny hypothesis, Canseco, despite his history of truth-telling, was indeed shredded in the press as a liar again in 2008 over the claim. In this case, it didn't help Jose that he has an admitted beef with A-Rod, claiming Rodriguez had an affair with Canseco's then wife. (Apparently A-Rod's affairs don't merely include cheating with wives of teammates: late last year, his wife Cynthia filed for divorce after a rumored adulterous affair between A-Rod and Madonna became top tabloid news.) His allegations did get some backing last year when former reliever John Rocker claimed MLB commissioner Bud Selig knew he failed a drug test for steroids in 2000, and doctors for both management and the players' association advised him and three other Texas Rangers - among them Alex Rodriguez - on how to use steroids. Of course, when the one person who helps confirm your story is a notorious pariah like the racist Rocker, it tends to undercut, rather than enhance, credibility.

Despite this, it appears Canseco is once again vindicated. In February, Sports Illustrated reported that A-Rod was one of the 104 players who tested positive for steroids. As the controversy became the talk of the news cycle, A-Rod finally fessed up and admitted, yes, he was a steroid cheat. The mea culpa came with a convenient asterisk, as A-Rod insisted he only did it from 2001-3 while with the Rangers, meaning he denied any usage after steroid use had penalties attached. In any case, his apology, especially the one he sent publicly to his teammates, was widely deemed as insincere.

Even with this limited hangout by A-Rod, outrage became the order of the day. No longer was "A-Fraud" enough of a put-down of the dude by his critics: "A-Roid" or (with even greater ingenuity, courtesy of a NY Post cover) "A-Hole" became the new insults. On David Letterman, a top ten joke list featuring messages left on A-Rod's answering machine included this knee-slapper: "Could you find a steroid that keeps you from choking in the playoffs?"

The SI report become the first shot of reporter Selena Roberts' A-Rod bio, the third book to talk smack about Rodriguez. Roberts claims A-Rod started his steroid regimen in high school, and that he has continued it during the Yankee years. She also made claims of another A-Rod cheating scandal: that A-Rod would tip buddies on other teams the pitch they were facing late in blowout games. According to Roberts, the quid quo pro deal allowed players in the pitch-tipping scandal to pad their stats in at-bats for games already decided, at the expense of late-inning pitchers. While the scheme wouldn't change the winner of the game, it certainly qualifies as an attack on the integrity of the game, perhaps even more so than steroids, and a betrayal of pitching teammates almost on par with sleeping with their wives.

(Adding insult to his injured reputation, a Yahoo! Sports article from August 2008 reported the next generation of Bill James wannabees had statistically uncovered a sabermetrics to measure clutch hitting, and A-Rod, as critics had long insisted, was indeed a pressure-situation choker.)

Fortunately for A-Rod, a cyst on his hip forced him to miss the first full month of the season. (Cynics note that a common side-effect of steroid usage is cysts developing at injection point.) By the time of his May 8th return, A-Rod outrage had dipped and been superseded by the Manny dope scandal, and hitting a home run on the first pitch certainly aided him in forgiveness. Come October, maybe A-Rod can finally earn the love (and the $275 million) he has long craved from fans by finally delivering in the playoffs, and the forgiveness that comes with it. Based on his track record, however, The Konformist is betting against him once again.

In the end, A-Rod is merely just another scapegoat in sports, a face for the public to focus wrath. And that's why we expect this to be the last steroid-related athlete BOTM we do, even if another great baseball superstar is eventually shockingly uncovered as a secret doper. But that doesn't mean we'll stop covering this issue: as The Konformist and Jose Canseco long have pointed out, the owners and the league itself have long sanctioned the steroid era with their covert consent. The tale of John Rocker, that the commissioner himself knew he failed a 2000 test and that management advised him on how to properly juice, provides ample evidence of just how complicit they are. Indeed, the evidence suggests that even as Bud Selig was personally promoting the "A-Rod as baseball savior" myth, he already knew via the 2003 tests that Rodriguez was a cheater. Meanwhile, as Nation magazine writer Dave Zirin has noted, owners "have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport." If they ever are, no doubt The Konformist will be there ready to point fingers again where they deserve.

In any case, we salute Alex Rodriguez as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Al!!!

Sources:

Blum, Ronald. "A-Rod Says He Expects Questions on Drugs." Associated Press 20 February 2008 <http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iCj65bmE8AEQ7MvFQrBVYXwwJp9QD8UUAVI80>.

Brinson, Will. "Jose Canseco Says '90 Percent Chance' Manny Ramirez Is on 'The List'." MLB FanHouse 6 April 2009 <http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2009/04/06/jose-canseco-says-90-chance-manny-ramirez-is-on-steroids-list>.

Canseco, Jose. Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.

Canseco, Jose. Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

"Details on A-Rod's Alleged Pitch-Tipping Scheme in Texas." Sports Illustrated 30 April 2009 <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/04/30/roberts.qa>.

Escherich, Katie. "Exclusive: Jose Canseco Says 'The Truth Hurts'." ABC News 26 March 2008 <http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=4528387>.

Harris, Beth and Blum, Rondald. "Ramirez Suspended 50 Games for Drug Violation." Yahoo! Sports 7 May 2009 <http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AozPbdpnRxDcG.ttoQ3gr6URvLYF?slug=ap-dodgers-ramirez-drugs>.

"Jose Canseco Smirking Smugly At Nation." The Onion 12 February 2009 <http://www.theonion.com/content/from_print/jose_canseco_smirking_smugly>.

Passan, Jeff. A-Rod Is a $300 Million Migraine." Yahoo! Sports 31 August 2008 <http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AqYZcgXmuHwg3tDIHBh5_VYRvLYF?slug=jp-arod083108>.

Roberts, Selena. A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.

Roberts, Selena and Epstein, David. "Sources Tell SI Alex Rodriguez Tested Positive for Steroids in 2003." Sports Illustrated 7 February 2009 <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/02/07/alex-rodriguez-steroids/index.html>.

Streeter, Kurt. "Manny Ramirez Blindsided Everyone but Jose Canseco." Los Angeles Times 7 May 2009 <http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-spw-streeter-manny8-2009may08,0,5943246.story>.

Torre, Joe and Verducci, Tom. The Yankee Years. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

Verducci, Tom. "Alltime All-Star Team." Sports Illustrated 3 October 2006 <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/magazine/10/03/bb.allstar1009/index.html>.

Zirin, Dave. "A-Rod, Anabolic Agonist Sports." The Nation 9 February 2009 <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/zirin>.

Ortiz and Ramirez Said to Be on 2003 Doping List

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/sports/baseball/31doping.html

Ortiz and Ramirez Said to Be on 2003 Doping List
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
July 30, 2009

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.

Some of baseball’s most cherished storylines of the past decade have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs, including the accomplishments of record-setting home run hitters and dominating pitchers. Now, players with Boston’s championship teams of 2004 and 2007 have also been linked to doping.

Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.

Five others have been tied to positive tests from that year: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Grimsley and David Segui. Bonds, baseball’s career home runs leader, was not on the original list, although federal agents seized his 2003 sample and had it retested. Those results showed the presence of steroids, according to court documents.

The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with multiple lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information is under seal by a court order. The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected.

Unlike Ramirez, who recently served a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy, Ortiz had not previously been linked to performance-enhancing substances.

Scott Boras, the agent for Ramirez, would not comment Thursday.

Asked about the 2003 drug test on Thursday in Boston, Ortiz shrugged. “I’m not talking about that anymore,” he said. “I have no comment.”

The union has argued that the government illegally seized the 2003 test results, and judges at various levels of the federal court system have weighed whether the government can keep them. The government hopes to question every player on the list to determine where the drugs came from. An appeals court is deliberating the matter, and the losing side is likely to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office for the Northern District of California, which seized the tests, declined to comment on Thursday. Michael Weiner, the general counsel for the players union, also declined to comment.

One by one, the names of elite players tied to performance-enhancing drugs have surfaced this year. In February, it was Rodriguez and Bonds. In May, it was Ramirez — for the first time. In June, it was Sosa.

Rodriguez had been viewed by some as a clean player who could eventually overtake the career home run record established by Bonds, who had been linked to possible drug use through the federal investigation. Rodriguez subsequently admitted that he used a performance-enhancing substance from 2001 to 2003.

The Times reported in June that Sosa was among those who tested positive in 2003, the first time he had been publicly tied to performance-enhancing drugs. Sosa became a national figure with the Chicago Cubs in 1998, when he and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals engaged in a celebrated race to overtake Roger Maris’s single-season home run record of 61. McGwire’s image suffered tremendously when, at a Congressional hearing in 2005, he refused to answer questions about steroid use.

By 2003, Ramirez had long since established himself as one of baseball’s best hitters. Ortiz, however, was less known. In 2002, the Minnesota Twins effectively cut him after failing to trade him. He signed a bargain contract with the Red Sox and began the 2003 season as a backup.

Ortiz quickly blossomed, setting personal highs in home runs (31) and runs batted in (101). He surpassed those numbers in each of the next four seasons.

Ramirez, with his dreadlocks and quirky behavior, and Ortiz, with his gregarious personality and portly build, formed a dynamic tandem on and off the field. They seemed to feed off each other — not to mention demoralize opponents — by hitting back-to-back in the heart of the lineup.

In 2004, they helped the Red Sox overcome a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. The Red Sox then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series to end decades of heartbreak in Boston. Ortiz had a game-winning home run and a game-winning hit against the Yankees and was named the most valuable player of that series. Ramirez was named the World Series M.V.P. after going 7 for 17 at the plate with a home run.

Three years after winning that first title, Ramirez and Ortiz returned Boston to another World Series, where they defeated the Colorado Rockies.

The pairing was split last season when the Red Sox traded Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers after team officials grew concerned that he was not playing hard in response to a contract dispute. In Los Angeles, Ramirez took off again, becoming popular among the fans and leading the Dodgers to the playoffs.

But Ramirez’s hero status in Los Angeles took a hit in May when he was suspended after baseball officials learned that he had been prescribed a fertility drug often used by bodybuilders after they stopped using steroids. When Ramirez was suspended, he issued a statement that appeared to maneuver around his 2003 test results.

“I do want to say one other thing,” Ramirez said. “I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”

That five-year period extended back to 2004, which excludes the 2003 test.

Since returning from his suspension, Ramirez has been widely accepted by the home fans. In 48 games this season, he has compiled a .327 average and has hit 11 home runs.

Ortiz, meanwhile, has been in a sharp decline. He had an operation on his wrist last year and missed nearly a third of the season. He started this year in a slump and did not hit his first home run until a month and a half into the season. Since June 1, however, he has hit 12 more home runs.

In 2007, Ortiz said that he used to buy a protein shake in the Dominican Republic when he was younger and did not know if it contained a performance-enhancing drug.

“I don’t do that anymore because they don’t have the approval for that here, so I know that, so I’m off buying things at the GNC back in the Dominican Republic,” Ortiz told The Boston Herald. He added: “I don’t know if I drank something in my youth, not knowing it.”

In February, he said that players who tested positive for steroids should be suspended for an entire season — about 100 games more than the current policy requires for a first offense.

David Waldstein contributing reporting from Boston.

Henderson and Rice together forever

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/baseball/mlb/wires/07/23/2010.ap.bbo.hall.of.fame.adv25.1338/

Thursday July 23, 2009
Henderson and Rice together forever

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. (AP) - Rickey Henderson knew what was expected every time he batted. So, too, did Jim Rice.

"Some way, I was going to scratch to get on base to steal that base,'' Henderson said. "I steal that base, my day was good. My pride and joy was coming across the plate.''

Said Rice: "Believe me, I wasn't paid to walk. I was paid to try to do some damage.''

Each player - Henderson, the quintessential leadoff man with an infectious smile, and Rice, the consummate power hitter with an icy glare - inflicted more than his share of damage on opponents, and they will be duly recognized for their considerable career accomplishments Sunday when they are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The pair will be the first inductees to primarily play left field since Boston's Carl Yastrzemski went into the Hall in 1989.

Former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon, elected posthumously by the Veterans Committee, also will be inducted, while former Yankees star and longtime broadcaster Tony Kubek and writer Nick Peters will be honored as winners of the Frick and Spink awards, respectively.

"As a kid, you grow up playing the game, and you never really know what you can achieve,'' Henderson said.

A member of nine teams during his 25-year career, the fun-loving Henderson achieved more than most. He holds the all-time records for stolen bases in a season (130) and career (1,406), for runs scored (2,295) and for leading off a game with a home run (81).

"Competing against myself - I think that's what made me the player that I became,'' Henderson said. "I had a lot of desire to be a winner and play the game to the fullest.''

Born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1958, Henderson moved with his family to California when he was 7 and became a three-sport star at Oakland Technical High School. Football was his forte and he received numerous scholarship offers to play college ball, turning them down for a shot at baseball.

Henderson was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the fourth round in 1976. After excelling in the minors for three seasons (at Modesto, in 1977, he led the California League with a then-record 95 steals and became just the fourth professional player to steal seven bases in one game), Henderson made his major league debut with Oakland in late June 1979. He still led the club that season with 33 steals.

When Oakland owner Charlie Finley hired Billy Martin as manager in 1980, Henderson had the perfect partner in crime. "Billyball'' - the aggressive attack Martin relished - helped catapult Henderson to stardom.

The speedy Henderson set the American League season steals record with 100 in only his second year, joining Maury Wills and Lou Brock as the only major league players of the modern era to steal 100 or more bases a season.

"I went out there and put it together, but it wasn't just me,'' said Henderson, who eclipsed the AL record of 96 set by Ty Cobb in 1915. "Billy helped teach me how to win. He had a strategy and we worked together and achieved that. There was no doubt I was gone when you told me to go.''

Henderson quickly evolved into perhaps the most dangerous player in baseball, seemingly always able to make something from nothing. After leading the AL in hits during the strike-shortened 1981 season, the "Man of Steal'' used his trademark headfirst slides to break Brock's single-season steals record with 130 in 1982.

After the 1984 season, Henderson was traded to the New York Yankees and soon was reunited with Martin after Yogi Berra was fired as manager.

Henderson hit 24 homers and batted .314 with a league-leading 80 stolen bases in 1985, and his 146 runs scored were the most since Ted Williams had 150 in 1949.

The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Henderson gained at the plate by shrinking into a tight crouch, dramatically cutting his strike zone and confounding pitchers like no other player.

"Rickey just made it impossible not to be distracted by him,'' said Tony La Russa, who managed Henderson at Oakland and dreaded managing against him.

Just the 44th player elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility, Henderson retired with 2,190 career walks (128 more than Babe Ruth), and although Barry Bonds has since eclipsed that total, Henderson still holds the record for most unintentional walks with 2,129. What is most amazing is that 796 of those free passes - or 37 percent - came while leading off an inning, something every opposing pitcher and catcher desperately wanted to avoid.

"I had a strategy of my strike zone and how can I beat a pitcher, and I think I was more patient,'' said Henderson, who broke Cobb's record of 2,246 career runs and Zack Wheat's record of 2,328 career games in left field. "I loved battling against a pitcher.''

The flamboyant Henderson, who during his career frequently referred to himself in the third person and often was accused of showboating on the field with his trash talk and snatch catch - he said it was simply "Rickey being Rickey'' - also liked being paid well for his services. That led him to develop another of his fortes - leading off games with a home run.

"I'm killing myself. I was stealing all the bases, and when you had to go to arbitration they said, 'You know, only the big boys make the money,''' Henderson said. "So I got to try and figure out how to hit a home run, too.''

He learned. In 1990, Henderson matched his career high with 28 homers. He also stole 65 bases and led the majors with a .439 on-base percentage, winning AL MVP honors.

Hitting homers was second nature to Rice, who played his entire career for the Boston Red Sox. Playing at a time when offensive numbers paled in comparison to the past two decades, the so-called steroid era, Rice batted .298 with 382 home runs and 1,451 RBIs from 1974-89. He was voted to eight All-Star teams and finished in the top five in AL MVP voting six times, winning the award in 1978 when he batted .315 with 213 hits, 46 home runs, 139 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage.

The numbers get even more impressive.

Rice drove in 100 or more runs eight times, batted over .300 seven times, and topped 200 hits four times. And he's the only player in major league history with at least 35 homers and 200 hits in three consecutive seasons (1977-79).

That it took until his final year of eligibility probably rankled every time a new class was announced. If there ever was any bitterness, though, it has long since vanished.

"You let bygones be bygones,'' the 56-year-old Rice said. "Yeah, I wish I could have gone in on the first ballot or the second, not the last. But I'm in and some guys are still out. You cherish what you have. You cherish that you're in an elite category of guys that played the game one way - hard.

"There are a lot of guys that I started with my first year in rookie ball - about 60 guys - and only one made it to the big leagues.''

Henderson says he has one regret - that he didn't retire sooner.

"You got to wait five years to go into the Hall of Fame,'' he said. "If I would have thought about it, and just went on and got them five years up early, then I'd been a little younger. Then I could have came back after I went into the Hall of Fame, but I waited too long.''

Home Runs and Hypocrisy

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin

Home Runs and Hypocrisy: The Shaming of Manny Ramirez
By Dave Zirin

You would think that Manny Ramirez was caught fighting pit bulls alongside Martha Stewart.

ESPN's Bill Simmons says that he is "confronting my worst nightmare." Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports believes that it is time to talk about "lifetime bans." Boston Globe writer Tony Massarotti says, "everyone is guilty until proven innocent."

The sports radio and comment boards have been cesspools of racism. It's always easy to hate, especially someone who plays a game for a living and makes millions of dollars.

All I know is this: thanks to Major League Baseball's hypocritical, idiotic and altogether morally bankrupt steroid policy, the sport will be without one of its premier attractions for fifty games, someone I would pay to watch at batting practice. Yes, Manny Ramirez, the finest right-handed hitter of his generation, has been sent to the showers and forced to surrender $7.7 million in salary after testing positive for what was initially called a "performance-enhancing substance."

The decision ends a stretch where the former World Series MVP was reviving baseball in Los Angeles, leading the Dodgers to a 21-8 start and a record thirteen straight wins at home to open the season. Los Angeles, a town built on artifice and home to hordes of performance-enhanced entertainers, not to mention led by a performance-enhanced governor, now demands purity of its athletes. This is not a column that aims to "defend" Manny Ramirez, but condemn Major League Baseball's steroid idiocy. Besides, the quizzically quirky Ramirez is not at this point defending himself. Ramirez will not appeal the suspension and apologized, issuing a brief statement, which read in part: "I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me." But MLB, in a typically classy move, has leaked to the press that Ramirez tested positive for the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. Steroid specialists have fanned out across the airwaves explaining that HCG is used to increase testosterone levels, usually after a heavy steroid cycle.

Former AL MVP, author of Juiced, and admitted steroid user Jose Canseco, who pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor of trying to bring HCG across the Mexican border illegally, also weighed in: "It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold-turkey and needed HCG to get his [testoterone] levels back to normal."

The use of a "female fertility drug" also has sports radio hosts in a pubescent tizzy asking if "Manny is a mommy" and ESPN's Jayson Stark making an "octo-mom" joke.

From the juvenile to the pious, President Obama's press flack Robert Gibbs took time out from explaining why torturers are above the law to tell us, "It's a tragedy, it's a shame." There is a tragedy and a shame afoot, but it is not rooted in the choices of one player. It's in a baseball culture that continues to think embarrassing individual players and feeding on the resentment of fans is the best path to cleaning up the sport. Manny has now joined Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and many others as permanently stained with a scarlet S. No Hall of Fame, no old timers' games and a life as a cautionary tale.

Meanwhile we all get taken to the cleaners. We have billionaire owners making scapegoats of millionaire players to soothe our anxieties about the game and our lives. Meanwhile these same owners sit like pashas in a baseball palace that could be called the House That Steroids Built.

The man who wrote Juiced knows when a cycle has run its course. Canseco said that he believes the coverage on steroids in baseball has become "overkill" and the spotlight should now be on MLB and the players association. He called it "a complete conspiracy." He's absolutely correct. Baseball owners love conspiracies. For more than twenty years they have conspired to attain public funds for ballparks. In 2008, they collectively conspired not to sign the best hitter in the game, Barry Bonds. Now they are committed to the project of keeping the focus on the players, and off of themselves. We shouldn't let them. If Manny Ramirez is guilty of anything, it's being caught in between baseball's clubhouse culture and public sanctimony.

During the baseball's Summer of Love in 1998, when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs and Sammy Sosa smacked 66, the money came pouring in. No one cared that McGwire and Sosa looked like a pair of defensive tackles. Soon publicly funded stadiums were included in budgets for Washington, DC, New York City and Minnesota. The home run became the most marketable baseball item since peanuts and crackerjacks and no one wanted to look behind the curtain. It was sports. It was entertainment. It was an escape. Then came 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73, and all of a sudden we were supposed to be collectively sick at the thought of a home run. As baseball writer Adrian Burgos (Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line) said, "What continues to fascinate me is how MLB leadership is willing to allow individual players to take the full brunt of the collective failure of leadership. Today, pundits have ranted in at times rabid tones about the players who make millions for their role while those who make the hundred of millions (and even have billion- dollar stadiums constructed for them on the public dole) continue to profit. How many stadiums have been built since then and at what cost? All the wealth that has been accumulated at that level is in my mind just as, if not more, offensive, since the owners act as if they were not enablers and co-dependents as their players shot up, ingested and otherwise partook in performance-enhancing drugs."

We should always remember that former Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush made steroid persecution a recurring theme of his time in office, as long as owners were spared the spotlight. The hypocrisy should shame owners toward contrition--but they will happily crack some golden eggs, as long as it means that the goose that laid them lives. Even though come contract time, it's all about the numbers on your stat page, and not the number of clean tests. As baseball fan and poet Martin Espada told me, "Baseball is the Main Street of sports. (Think Cooperstown.) It's full of history and nostalgia, and paved with the bricks of hypocrisy. Now it's the rhetoric of the 'Drug War,' handed down from the Nixon White House forty years ago to MLB and ESPN today."

He is absolutely correct. We are supposed to tsk-tsk at players who are supposed to "just say no" to their addictions to fitness and monster stats, when their success at the park is our addiction as well. We also have yet to truly take owners to task for their addictions to public money and send them to detox.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Ramirez suspended 50 games for drug violation

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AozPbdpnRxDcG.ttoQ3gr6URvLYF?slug=ap-dodgers-ramirez-drugs

Ramirez suspended 50 games for drug violation
By BETH HARRIS and RONALD BLUM, AP Sports Writers
5-7-9

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Manny Ramirez joined a growing lineup of All-Stars linked to drugs Thursday, with the dreadlocked slugger banished for 50 games by a sport that cannot shake free from scandal.

The Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder was suspended by Major League Baseball for a drug violation, adding a further stamp to what will forever be known as the Steroids Era.

“It’s a dark day for baseball and certainly for this organization,” Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti told reporters on the field at Dodger Stadium. “This organization will never condone anything that isn’t clean.”

Ramirez said he did not take steroids and was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance. A person familiar with the details of the suspension said Ramirez used the female fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the banned substance wasn’t announced.

“As tough as it is for us, it’s pretty tough for Manny, too,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. “I know he’s the one that did the wrong thing and nobody is trying to cover that up, but it’s still something that I know he’s sorry about.”

HCG is popular among steroid users because it can mitigate the side effects of ending a cycle of the drugs. The body may stop producing testosterone when users go off steroids, which can cause sperm counts to decrease and testicles to shrink.

Ramirez’s suspension was based not on a spring training urine test result but rather evidence obtained afterward, a second person familiar with the suspension said, speaking on condition of anonymity because those details were not released. MLB had concluded the spring test was positive, but the person said the players’ association would have challenged the result because of “testing issues.”

Ranked 17th on the career home run list with 533, Ramirez became the most prominent baseball player to be penalized for drugs. His ban came three months after Alex Rodriguez admitted using steroids, and at a time when Barry Bonds is under federal indictment and Roger Clemens is being investigated by a federal grand jury to determine whether he lied when he told Congress he never used steroids or human growth hormone. And Miguel Tejada was sentenced in March to one year of probation after pleading guilty in federal court to misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

No matter which way baseball turns, the legitimacy of many of its recent home run and pitching records is being questioned. Sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have been tainted by steroid allegations, Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for a banned drug and Jose Canseco said he used them.

In every case, players once believed to be locks for the Hall of Fame may now be locked out.

“You can’t have arguably the greatest pitcher of our era, arguably the two greatest players of our era and now another very, very good player be under this cloud of suspicion and not feel like it has ruined it for everybody,” Atlanta star Chipper Jones said.

“But what are you going to do? You can’t be born in a different era. It is the Steroid Era,” he said.

Colletti and Torre said they found out about Ramirez’s suspension during an early morning phone call from team owner Frank McCourt. Both said they were surprised and saddened at the news.

Torre spoke to the rest of the team during a closed-door meeting before batting practice.

“The mood was sad in the clubhouse,” he said. “You can’t have someone who’s as much of an impact player and personality as Manny missing without it affecting people.”

The 36-year-old Ramirez tried to make amends right away, telling the Dodgers and fans he was sorry for “this whole situation.”

“Recently, I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me,” Ramirez said in a statement issued by the players’ union.

“Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing; I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past five seasons.”

Baseball added HCG to its list of banned substances last year.

His suspension was first reported by the Los Angeles Times on its Web site.

While Ramirez had little to say, Canseco was quick to explain why someone might use HCG.

“It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold-turkey and needed HCG to get his levels back to normal. I had to use it when I quit steroids cold-turkey,” Canseco, who pleaded guilty last November to a misdemeanor of trying to bring HCG across the Mexican border into the United States illegally, told the AP. “I had to go to a doctor to get it and get my levels back.”

Because MLB imposed the suspension as required by the drug agreement, the Dodgers cannot further discipline Ramirez. He is allowed to work out with the Dodgers but must be out of uniform when the stadium gates open for games.

Ramirez was not mentioned in the Mitchell Report, MLB’s official report on drug use, and there had not been whispers that he was among the sport’s juiced players.

“It’s kind of shocking that he got caught up in anything, honestly. Manny likes to play stupid, but he’s a pretty bright guy. And he’s definitely aware of a lot of things that he tries to act like he’s completely oblivious to,” said Cincinnati pitcher Bronson Arroyo, Ramirez’s former Boston teammate.

Ramirez’s agent, Scott Boras, and the players’ association had gathered materials for a possible appeal to an arbitrator, but Ramirez decided not to file one because he didn’t want to risk missing significant time in the second half of the season, the person familiar with details of the suspension said. The union said merely that he waived his right to contest the suspension.

Reaction to Ramirez’s ban came swiftly, from major league clubhouses to the White House.

“It’s a tragedy. It’s a shame. My sense is, it’s a great embarrassment on Major League Baseball,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

The penalty left the best team in the majors without its driving force and free spirit for nearly one-third of the season.

Ramirez’s suspension began Thursday, a day after the Dodgers broke the modern major league record for a home winning streak, opening the season 13-0. Barring any postponements, he will be able to return to the Dodgers for the July 3 game at San Diego. Ramirez will lose $7,650,273 of his $25 million salary.

Rodriguez and Ramirez are the two highest-paid players in the majors. With this suspension, six of the top 17 home run hitters in history now have been covered by the cloud of performance-enhancing drugs.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig couldn’t comment on the suspension because of provisions of the management-union drug agreement, spokesman Rich Levin said.

Ramirez became the fourth player suspended this year under the major league program, following Philadelphia reliever J.C. Romero, Yankees pitcher Sergio Mitre and San Francisco pitcher Kelvin Pichardo.

The Dodgers began the 50-game stretch without Ramirez on Thursday night against Washington. Juan Pierre received loud applause when he was introduced as Ramirez’s replacement in the starting lineup, but there were scattered boos when he came to the plate for the first time.

Losing Ramirez to suspension could be a huge blow financially for the Dodgers. The slugger has been single-handedly responsible for increasing attendance, merchandise sales and interest in the team, besides helping it win the NL West after his late-season arrival in 2008.

Los Angeles even renamed a section of seats in left field at Dodger Stadium “Mannywood” in his honor. Hours after the suspension, the team removed a reference to those seats from its Web site.

Torre, however, insisted Ramirez is welcome anytime.

“The thing that was toughest for Manny is how he disappointed everybody,” he said. “He loved it here, and he loves how the fans get turned on by him. He was devastated.”

Associated Press Baseball Writer Ron Blum reported from New York, with AP Sports Writer Beth Harris in Los Angeles. AP Sports Writers Dan Gelston in Philadelphia, Joe Kay in Cincinnati, R.B. Fallstrom in St. Louis, Stephen Wilson in London and Steve Wine in Miami, National Writer Ben Walker in New York and AP Writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Barry Bonds in Context

Folks – there is a shakeup at MSNBC and they are adding new programming at the 10 PM hour. If you think MSNBC could use a left wing sports commentator, please drop a quick note to letters@msnbc.com and tell them that a little Dave Z could go a long way.

In struggle and sports,

Dave Z

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/zirin

Barry Bonds in Context
Southpaw
By Dave Zirin
March 4, 2009

As he has done with countless pitchers over the last quarter-century, Barry Bonds made the Justice Department sweat, cower and blink. Faced with entering a court of law with a losing hand, the US Attorney's office in San Francisco has delayed the case of The US v. Barry Bonds indefinitely. Efforts to prove that the home-run king lied in grand jury testimony about his anabolic intake have for now been benched.

The prosecution will now start a lengthy appeal of Judge Susan Ilston's devastating pretrial dismissal of most of their case. It had wanted to submit reams of evidence seized from Bonds's trainer Greg Anderson, without having Anderson testify to its authenticity. Ilston refused to let them. This left the prosecution with nothing but scatological testimony from Bonds's ex-mistress that dwelled more on testicles than test results, so they chose to retreat and regroup.

The Justice Department wins 95 percent of the cases it brings to trial, and make no mistake: this case was about to become part of the other 5 percent. The only thing the Justice Department had in its favor is what it always has, unlimited time and funds, so it's rolling the dice in hopes that a three-judge panel rules against Ilston. It wants the wiretaps, the illegal search and seizures and the acts of intimidation against Anderson's family all to stand legally. This is frightening, but prosecutors will likely find themselves very disappointed. The page appears to be turning on the entire Bush era of outlaw justice, and Barry Bonds will likely benefit.

The case started when Attorney General John Ashcroft, the great champion of the Patriot Act, held a press conference in 2004 to announce that the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative was officially underway. Having the Attorney General convene a grand jury to look into steroid use was extreme overkill, but as commentators remarked at the time, it was a shot across the bow at Bonds. Most sports fans were very comfortable with seeing the despoiler of the national pastime get crushed. Bonds has had notoriously difficult relationships with the press, fans, teammates and management throughout his career. He is also black, which makes him an easier target. But the desire to see Bonds punished came at a terrible collective cost.

The Bonds case has always been about more than the sports media have chosen to dwell on. It's not about the scourge of anabolic steroids, or a surly, arrogant athlete getting his comeuppance. It isn't even about perjury. It's about how the Justice Department under Bush became untethered from the Bill of Rights.

This week, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has released a series of post-9/11 memos that chill the spine. As the Washington Post reported:

Justice Department appointee John Yoo argued that constitutional provisions ensuring free speech and barring warrantless searches could be disregarded by the president in wartime, allowing troops to storm a building if they suspected terrorists might be inside. In another, the department asserted that detainees could be transferred to countries known to commit human rights abuses so long as US officials did not intentionally seek their torture.

And as Michael Isikoff wrote in Newsweek:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the US military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against US citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.

Bonds has been the most public victim of this frightening approach to law and justice. But while Americans followed the Bonds saga, and many cheered his professional demise, the real damage to civil liberties was being done. Shamefully underreported throughout the last decade were the stories of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims imprisoned and harassed through the Patriot Act, or the persecution of Sami Al Arian, or the hundreds of Maryland activists, who were spied upon for being environmentalists or anti-death penalty. They were all caught in the same net.

It is a very good thing that Holder is releasing these memos. But it's not enough. Repealing the Patriot Act is the best way to truly turn the page on a shameful era in the history of US law.

Still, the ruling of Judge Ilston and the backstepping of the San Francisco US Attorney's office is a good start. If they want to prove Bonds perjured himself, let's see if they can do it without torching the Bill of Rights in the process.

About Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.

Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The US v. Barry Bonds

The US v. Barry Bonds
By Dave Zirin

This is a story about garbage. There's the actual garbage overzealous federal investigators examined in their efforts to prosecute a surly sports celebrity. There's the shredding of the Bill of Rights, crudely ignored by the government in the name of obsession and ambition. Finally, there's the thorough trashing of people's reputations, not to mention the game of baseball. Welcome to The US v. Barry Bonds ; please disregard the stench.

The trial to prove that slugger Barry Bonds perjured himself in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) steroid investigation begins March 2. Yet after seven years of investigation, millions of dollars in work hours and countless ruined reputations, the US Attorney's Office will arrive in court with virtually no leg to stand on. Judge Susan Illston struck down most of the prosecution's case, a move ESPN legal expert Lester Munson called a "devastating" setback for prosecutors. The ruling was an indictment of not only the government's case but its entire approach toward Bonds from day one.

John Ashcroft's Justice Department always seemed irrationally determined to prosecute Bonds. It was as obsessive as the fisherman Santiago attempting to bring home the great marlin in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . The embodiment of this obsession was IRS agent Jeff Novitzky. He broke open the BALCO case after spending a great deal of time, to the adulation of the press, literally sifting through the company's garbage and sewage.

Novitzky was given the green light by President Bush and Ashcroft to go for the jugular. In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, he marched into Comprehensive Drug Testing, the nation's largest sports-drug testing company. Armed with a warrant to see the confidential drug tests of ten baseball players, he walked out with 4,000 supposedly sealed medical files, including every baseball player in the major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN magazine, "Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky's actions a 'callous disregard' for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence...."

It was a frightening abuse of power, all aimed at imprisoning a prominent African-American athlete. Yet despite the landfills of trash, the government's case always rested on a flimsy premise. Bonds's contention under oath was that anything illegal he may have ingested was without prior knowledge. The only person who could contradict Bonds was his trainer and longtime friend Greg Anderson. The government pressed Anderson to give testimony. He refused, citing a promise made by the feds that he wouldn't have to testify after pleading guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering in 2005. The feds stuck him in jail for thirteen months to soften him up, but he didn't crack.

Anderson has remained firm even though in January, twenty FBI and IRS agents raided the home of his mother-in-law and threatened to punish her for tax evasion if Anderson didn't spill. Similar threats have been made against his wife. Mark Geragos, Anderson's attorney, told Yahoo Sports, "It's such a blatant and transparent attempt to intimidate Greg. They're acting like the Gestapo. Even the mafia spares the women and children." Without Anderson, the state's case was always weak. But now itis on serious life support. Illston ruled most of Novitzky and the government's case inadmissible, for good reason.

The prosecution wanted to submit a surreptitiously recorded statement from Anderson as well as notations on what it calls his "drug calendar," even though he would not testify to authenticate any of the evidence. Illston, to her credit, said no dice and declared those items inadmissible. The government has raised the specter of jailing Anderson again, but Illston remarked in a "raised voice" that jailing someone twice for refusing to testify would be beyond the pale.

The government is hinting that it will appeal Illston's ruling, but that would indefinitely delay the trial. If the US Attorney's Office does continue the case, it has made clear its next line of offense: it will have Bonds's former mistress, Kimberly Bell, testify in detail about the alleged "shriveling" of Bonds's testicles. Jeff Novitzky should be proud.

It's way past time to say enough is enough.

Whether or not you are a Barry Bonds fan, or consider him to be just a step above a seal-clubbing, pit bull-fighting bank executive, every person of good conscience should be aghast at the way the Justice Department has gone about its business. Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson and maybe thousands of others have had their rights trampled on, all for the glory of a perjury case that looks to be going absolutely nowhere. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama have strongly indicated that the government is getting out of the steroid monitoring business. That is welcome, but after so many years, so many tax dollars and so many reputations destroyed, it all feels positively Pyrrhic.

At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, when Santiago finally returns to shore, his 18-foot catch has been reduced to a skeleton. A crowd gathers to gawk and imagine what the magnificent marlin once was. Santiago completed his journey with nothing, but he felt purified for the battle and slept deeply and proudly. As we pick through the bones of Barry Bonds, I can't imagine Jeff Novitzky feels the same.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .

A-Rod, Anabolic Agonist Sports

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/zirin

A-Rod, Anabolic Agonist Sports
By Dave Zirin
February 9, 2009

Should we pity Alex Rodriguez? The three-time MVP, owed $275 million over the next nine years, has been exposed as a steroid user, the latest in Major League Baseball's endless series of anabolic agonists. The creative minds at the New York Post summed up the mood of the moment with one blaring headline: "A-Fraud." ESPN senior writer Jayson Stark was no less overwrought; his headline proclaimed, "A- Rod Has Destroyed Game's History."

However, the list of frauds and history defamers extends far beyond the Yankee third baseman. Before we gather the torches and pitchforks, let us round up some of the real villains. When it comes to steroids, no one, as A-Rod's alleged paramour Madonna might say, is like a virgin. For instance, there's league commissioner Bud Selig, who touted A-Rod as the man who would replace the "unclean" Barry Bonds as the all-time leader in home runs. Then there is the Major League Baseball Players Association. Once arguably the most powerful union in the United States, the MLBPA has in its possession the infamous list of 104 players tested in 2003. That year a deal between the owners and the union was supposed to be based on anonymity and trust. If more than 5 percent of the players tested positive, more testing with suspensions would ensue. The union promised its members that it would destroy the list. Instead it inexplicably held onto the list long enough for the government to seize it for the BALCO investigations.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Steinbrenner family also have anabolic egg on their faces. They were depending on A-Rod to be the cherry atop the sundae of the new billion-dollar Yankee Stadium expected to open this year. Hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have gone into this public works project, with specious promises of economic renewal. Now it may just set the stage for a season-long, agonizing fall from grace.

Finally, there are the owners-at-large, who have yet to have to face any kind of Congressional subcommittee, grand jury or operatic media melodrama for their role in cheapening the sport. Stark, in his piece blaming A-Rod for shredding the very fabric of baseball history, writes:

In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't even understand: a crime against the once-proud history of his sport.

What Stark and his misguided minions ignore is that if we are upset about the way numbers and hallowed records have become cheapened over the past fifteen years, ownership is the problem--and it extends far beyond steroids.

Owners actually had a multifaceted strategy to try to make baseball more like beer-league softball--and it was about as subtle as a tabloid's back page. As legendary baseball writer Bob Klapisch said, "Somewhere someone decided that baseball needed more runs. It was made at a very fundamental level. And little by little, step by step, this became the new reality. There has been too much to write it off as coincidence."

The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past twenty years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States. They are supposed to be fan-friendly--that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.

Then there are the balls and bats. Countless baseball insiders believe that the ball is now wound tighter than it was twenty years ago. As for the bats, as recently as fifteen years ago, players used untreated ash bats. Now the bats are maple and lacquered. That means the ball goes farther.

Then there is the strike zone. The area where a pitched ball can be called a strike has shrunk, in the words of retired pitcher Greg Maddux, to "the size of a postage stamp." The owners consciously engineered this trend toward the microscopic strike zone. When umpires refused to agree to a uniform strike zone, Major League Baseball crushed their union and instituted a machine to monitor their abilities. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, "The loss of the high strike has changed the game more than any pill."

But an equally big reason home run numbers are up is that the game finally shed its nineteenth-century view of strength conditioning. The training standard until the 1990s was that if Joe "Ducky" Medwick didn't do it in the '30s, then it shouldn't be done. For example, it has been the conventional wisdom for most of baseball's history that weightlifting would destroy your swing. Many teams even fined or suspended players if they were caught pumping iron. Weightlifting is now as much a part of every team's regimen as shagging fly balls.

Alex Rodriguez is set to be the next former slugger torn to pieces by columnists, fans and the sports radio blabbocracy. They all need to crack open some Michael Phelps medicinal magic and relax. Rodriguez may not deserve your pity, but he hardly deserves your scorn. Reserve that for the owners, political leaders and Bud the commissioner--who robbed our cities blind and distracted us with dingers so we wouldn't notice.

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, SportsIllustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.

Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Positive Drug Tests in Bonds Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/sports/baseball/05bonds.html

February 5, 2009
Positive Drug Tests in Bonds Case
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

The government’s perjury case against Barry Bonds gained vivid detail on Wednesday when more than 200 pages of evidence were unsealed. The pages included documents tying Bonds to four positive tests for steroids, calendars that prosecutors described as doping schedules, and a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Bonds’s former trainer is quoted as saying that he injected Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs.

Three urine samples that were sent for testing in 2000 and 2001 by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative showed the presence of anabolic steroids, according to the documents. A fourth test from a 2003 sample collected by Major League Baseball showed the presence of the designer steroid THG, the fertility drug clomid and a form of testosterone not naturally produced by the body.

When tested under Major League Baseball’s program, that sample came back negative for performance-enhancing drugs. But after the sample was seized in a 2004 raid by federal agents, it was retested by the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, with a different and, for Bonds, potentially troublesome result.

Not all of the information provided in the unsealed documents is new. But the documents provide a more complete portrait of the evidence that federal prosecutors have gathered on Bonds since the investigation of Balco began in 2002. Bonds is scheduled to go on trial March 2 in San Francisco on charges that he committed perjury in 2003 when he told the grand jury investigating Balco that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds’s lawyers filed a motion two weeks ago to have much of the evidence in the case excluded, arguing that it could not be authenticated. As part of that motion, the defense lawyers filed the evidence in dispute under seal, not wishing for it to be revealed. But United States District Judge Susan Illston ordered that it be made public and has scheduled a hearing for Thursday about its admissibility.

“While it may seem damning now, the judge may exclude a lot of the evidence and it may never make it before the jury,” said Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, in assessing the new information about the case. “But with all the attention being given to the case, the judge is going to have to be extra careful that the jury she seats has not been prejudiced by this information.”

Among the most intriguing sections in the unsealed documents is a description of what authorities said was a tape-recorded conversation, made in 2003, between Bonds’s former business manager, Steve Hoskins, and Bonds’s longtime trainer, Greg Anderson. Anderson spent more than a year in prison on contempt-of-court charges for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating Bonds.

According to a summary of the tape and a partial transcript, Anderson told Hoskins that he had injected Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs and that they were not detectable under baseball’s drug-testing program at the time. Anderson also told Hoskins that he had advance notice of when the drug tests would be conducted.

“I’ll know like probably a week in advance, or two weeks in advance,” Anderson is quoted as telling Hoskins in the transcript. According to the documents, Hoskins was recording the conversation, which took place in the Giants’ clubhouse, because Bonds’s father, Bobby, did not believe his son was using steroids.

Hoskins and Bonds were childhood friends who became particularly close after Bonds returned to San Francisco to play for the Giants in 1993. The two had a falling out in 2003 and Hoskins later cooperated with federal authorities, telling them that Bonds flew into “roid rages.” In the partial transcript, Hoskins is quoted as asking Anderson if the drugs being given to Bonds were the same “that Marion Jones and them were using.”

“Yeah, same stuff, the same stuff that worked at the Olympics,” Anderson is quoted as saying.

And, Anderson added for emphasis, Olympians were tested every week. “So that’s why I know it works,” Anderson is quoted as saying. (Jones, an Olympic gold-medal winner, pleaded guilty in 2007 to making false statements about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and received a six-month prison sentence.)

Although the results of the three urine samples that Balco tested in 2000 and 2001 do not have Bonds’s name on them, prosecutors say they can be connected to handwritten notes seized at Balco and Anderson’s home in 2003. Those notes display the names of Bonds and other individuals and numbers that, prosecutors say, correlate to samples that Balco sent for drug testing. Prosecutors contend that the three tests show Bonds tested positive for two steroids — methenolone and nandrolone — in November 2000 and February 2001.

But in their 28-page motion to exclude evidence, Bonds’s lawyers said: “It appears that as to every proffered test result, the government can attempt to link Mr. Bonds to the sample in question only through purported hearsay statement of Anderson.”

In all, five pages of handwritten notes are attributed to Anderson, and in disputing them, the defense states: “The notes are barely comprehensible. Their author(s) are unknown as are the time and purpose of their preparation.”

The defense lawyers said the notes were indicative “of the government’s zeal to convict Mr. Bonds by any means at all.” They also said the doping calendars, which the prosecutors say Anderson created so he could monitor Bonds’s use of drugs, should not be admissible, either.

The fourth positive steroid test cited in the documents does not involve Anderson or his notes. Instead, it stems from the anonymous drug tests that were conducted by Major League Baseball in 2003, the first year of steroid testing on the major league level. There were no penalties for positive results, and not even the players were supposed to know how their tests came out.

Bonds’s urine sample did not produce a positive test under baseball’s guidelines. But in a raid in 2004, authorities seized the samples and test results of Bonds and the nine other players who had testified before the Balco grand jury. Two years later, the U.C.L.A. laboratory that retested Bonds’s sample concluded that it contained the designer steroid THG, known as “the clear”; clomid, an anti-estrogen drug used to stimulate natural testosterone levels; and the presence of testosterone not naturally made by the body.

Baseball did not test for THG in 2003 and did not begin testing for clomid until the 2007 season. Why Bonds did not test positive for testosterone in 2003 is not clear.

When Bonds testified before the Balco grand jury in 2003, he said that he had used the “clear” and the “cream,” a lotion with epitestosterone and testosterone, but did not believe they were performance-enhancing drugs. He said he believed the “clear” was flaxseed oil and that the “cream” was a balm for arthritis. He said he used the “cream” sparingly.

The New York Times reported last week that federal authorities had detected a steroid other than the “clear” and the “cream” in a urine sample from Bonds. The documents unsealed Wednesday said that testosterone had been detected in Bonds’s 2003 sample, but did not say whether the source was the “cream” or another anabolic steroid.

“You cannot tell from a urine analysis whether a person has used the cream or has been using other sources of testosterone, like gels, patches or injectables,” said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an antidoping expert and member of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The documents also included a 2006 letter from Commissioner Bud Selig to Bonds notifying him of a first-time positive test for amphetamines, which does not result in a suspension. The test result does not appear to be directly related to the perjury case.